film’s researcher/author. This is a sample of one of the slideshows I created for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. I used their fonts and created a new template that was be easier for inserting the photos and text. The text and images were provided by each film’s researcher/author.

American actor William Gillette coined the phrase “elementary, my dear fellow,” in an 1899 play about Sherlock Holmes. His interpretation created the template for subsequent portrayals of the character. A 1916 film of Gillette as Holmes is considered lost.

1916’s Sherlock Holmes with William Gillette in the lead (right) confronting archenemy Moriarty (Ernest Maupain), as Billy (Burford Hampden) looks on

Douglas Fairbanks played a drug-addled detective named Coke Ennyday in The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916). It is a delirious two-reeler sending up Sherlock Holmes’s interest in narcotics.

Douglas Fairbanks (center) as Coke Ennyday, with Tom Wilson (left) and an unidentified actor in The Mystery of the Leaping Fish 1916

Philo Vance, an upper-class sleuth created by writer Willard Wright, made his first movie appearance in 1929’s The Canary Murder Case. William Powell played the detective and Louise Brooks played the “canary” showgirl.

Louise Brooks as the doomed “canary” in The Canary Murder Case 1929

Raymond Chandler, creator of Philip Marlowe, once praised the creator of Sam Spade: “[Dashiell] Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse.”

Left: Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade with Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon 1941 Right: Bogart as Philip Marlowe with Dorothy Malone in The Big Sleep 1944

Daffy Duck donned Sherlock Holmes’s deerstalker cap in 1956’s Deduce You Say, a Looney Tunes parody directed by Chuck Jones. Dorlock Holmes and Porky Pig as Watkins match wits with the Shropshire Slasher.

Watkins and Dorlock Holmes on the trail of the Shropshire Slasher in Deduce You Say 1956

Jeremy Brett redefined Sherlock Holmes for a new generation Jeremy Brett redefined Sherlock Holmes for a new generation. He appeared in 41 episodes of a lavish British TV series, which was the first attempt to adapt Conan Doyle’s original stories faithfully.

Publicity shot of Jeremy Brett in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1984

For Sherlock Jr., Buster Keaton and photographer Elgin Lessley improved the optical effects they had used in The Play House (1921), for which multiple exposures created the illusion of an orchestra made up entirely of Keatons.

Three Buster Keatons make music in The Play House 1921

Sherlock Jr. Slide Show by Richard Hildreth

Intermission music by The Ragtime Skedaddlers